Bartimaeus

What a dumb bastard if that's the case. As I've made clear many times in here, I'm pro-player 99% of the time, even when it's guys holding out and directly making my team worse...but this is just such a blood-boilingly stupid deception - worse than just publicly saying you're not vaccinated.

Not just that, but it's being reported that he's not even vaccinated, which...I have to think leads to a suspension for him at least, possibly fines/docked draft picks for the Packers, because he has clearly not been following the unvaccinated protocols. That, or there's some huge misunderstanding with the media and he is actually vaccinated. Ay, karamba. Also, he directly said in a press conference that he was vaccinated, so if he was deliberately lying about that (how could he not be if he's not vaccinated?), then...he as a person falls very low in my eyes. That'd be so stupid and dishonest.

I don't even like the sport and I was actively keeping up with the World Series and cheering for the Braves purely out of spite for the Astros. How could you not?

I don't have much of a problem with the job the Biden administration is doing in of itself (i.e. when it's not being held hostage to the two feckless senators from Arizona and West Virginia, though I always knew that the latter was going to be a serious problem from the get-go but accepted that it was certainly much better than handing Senate control over to Mitch McConnell), but the party itself as a whole has done pretty much the complete and utter opposite to inspire their voters to...well, vote for them. These results are sadly not much of a surprise - it seems likely Democrats will lose control of both the House and the Senate in 2022 unless they radically change course, and there's zero reason to expect them to, so...

I made the mistake of not playing the DLC on my first normal game, so then I was going to play it on my SL1 run instead. Well...I completed everything but the DLC on my SL1 run again, and by that time, I was pretty exhausted with the game and had zero desire to try to master the insane DLC bosses without having even played them before...so I still haven't done the DLC, . I don't think I've ever been able to enjoy a metroidvania game that uses ranged weapons instead of melee...or a metroidvania that's longer than like 4, maybe 5 hours. All the Metroid games will thus forever be unplayed by me.

Samurai Champloo, episode 7. Champloo apparently means "stirred together", so the title of the show essentially means "samurai stew", as best as I can tell. Unfortunately, the real problem that our "samurai" constantly face is the fact that they DON'T have any stew, because they are seemingly just about starving every episode. ...I really liked her plenty well already, but Fuu pretty concretely solidifies herself as a genuinely great main character in this one - what a downer of an episode, though. Lmao, must feel bad to get racially stereotyped by anime. (e): Couldn't just watch one, so Samurai Champloo, episode 8: Look at that, another good episode, although one that was...a lot sillier, to say the least (but that's perfectly well and good after the last - this one felt like it wouldn't have been entirely out of place as a JoJo episode, what with the utterly ridiculous "samurai" and his beatboxing entourage). I listened to like 30 seconds of the English dub - way back when I watched the first episode, I think I only tried the English dub for literally about 3 or 4 seconds before I switched to the Japanese and was like "oh, they got perfect voice direction for this", and never had even the slightest inclination to try the English again. It's not a...bad dub, but the Japanese is not only much better, but feels way more thematically fitting for this setting and style. Also, Japanese!Fuu is a way stronger and better fit than English!Fuu, so that dooms the English as well. Also, I'm glad @LadyCrimson brought Samurai Champloo up in the TV thread and I said that I'll take that as a recommendation after having already seen one episode and then immediately got a couple of other people to also recommend it, because@KP the meanie zucchini is not wrong: it is a great show that does just about everything right. Even the really strange choice of music style works for it - anytime you take a style of music that I hate and are able to make me at least appreciate it how it's used and enjoy it, you know that the show/movie/game is doing at least a good job overall. @majestic Could you edit in a link to the previous thread in the first post? I sometimes use that to go back and locate posts of previous threads, and the unusual way the thread was split here doesn't allow for that, and I certainly don't want to try to use the general search for it possibly months down the line.

So dumb, especially for a guy whose best friend was killed in a car accident and made that specific point a part of his motivation for succeeding. Too small of a sample size for me so far to say for sure, but last year he showed better performance under pressure than I think Kirk ever has - exactly where that poor man always falls apart and makes everyone remember him as a fraud.

I wasn't including 2000 or the other NT versions because they weren't really intended to be home desktop products, though 2000 (the first OS I had on my own PC) was ultimately used a bit for that purpose in the end regardless. 2000, XP, 7, and 10 for me, and 10 (LTSC) only just barely (finally switched this past year after a trial run of Windows 10 LTSC on my laptop and then my new Zen 2 PC more or less requiring it). It's been...fine so far, although I've had some pretty annoying issues that I've had to solve, but nowhere near as annoying as the consumer version of Windows 10 which I viewed as a no-go.

95 and 98 were a little before my time, so I don't really have much of a comment on them - I included them more to point out that the order listed was incorrect, as he put it 95, 98, XP, then Me, when Me actually came out before XP, so according to him, that would already break the pattern. Then he skipped over 8 entirely to get to 10 being bad and 11 being good, which makes zero sense. I know it's a meme that Microsoft screws up "every other" Windows release, but it's probably more accurate to say they've had a tendency to screw up the next Windows release following Windows releases that were major successes, though not always for the exact same reasons (...albeit those reasons have usually ultimately boiled down to "it's a bad user experience"). Windows 11 will probably be fine, since it basically seems like Windows 10.1 (in the sense of Windows 8 vs. 8.1). I'll more strongly consider it once I get my hands on the LTSC version in probably 2022 or 2023 when it comes out, and not a moment before.

Sakura

They, as well as the Seahawks, look so much like the dysfunctional Packers of the latter McCarthy years, it actually pains me to watch either of them. Elite QBs that don't seem to have any faith in their teams and are frequently playing out of rhythm heroball that treads the line between utter brilliance (when it works) and flabbergastingly awful (when it doesn't)...combined with the team around them actually being pretty mediocre and putting them in bad spots. Mahomes is a lot less conservative than Rodgers was - Rodgers would kind of go into his shell where he would never give his receivers a chance unless they were wide open and would just constantly throw the ball away rather than trying to force anything or risk them screwing up (IIRC, he actually set the all-time record for most throwaways back in 2018, McCarthy's last year). Mahomes looks to be a bit of the opposite mindset, though not as bad as a certain other QB on the Colts who seems willing to throw entire games...and maybe even his life away for even the slightest chance of making a play. I'm not sure what's going on with the Browns - they have a lot of talent, including healthier receiving talent than they had last year, but it just seems like the team doesn't have much chemistry and isn't quite working as it should right now. I hope Baker Mayfield gets back to more how he played last year - even just being solid like he was then had to have felt like the second coming in comparison to what the Browns have experienced over the last 20 years.

Sakura, episode 61, :

You and poor Chibi-Usa. Horse girls... @majestic I can't imagine how much I would dislike that film based on all the things you've said about it (not just now but also months ago) given that I already had serious problems with the series.

Windows 95 (1995): Good Windows 98 (1998): Bad? Windows Me (2000): Bad Windows XP (2001): Good Windows Vista (2007): Bad Windows 7 (2009): Good Windows 8 (2012): Bad Windows 10 (2015): Bad? Windows 11 (2021): Good?

I literally nearly made that exact joke, as I originally was going to have "...maybe something I'll have to remedy next year, " at the end of that post instead, but I thought better of it, .

IIRC (because I categorically refuse to play the EEs and will only play on the original engine), SCS hijacks the difficulty menu in the EE games and you can use a preset to get close to what you want out of the mod while using the fine-tuning thingy to correct whatever small points of interest you want. The actual Stratagems installer puts its components into a few different categories, and it sounds like you would be best off ignoring the "tactical challenges" category of components and only installing the "AI enhancement" components.

You never know when they'll strike! @Halloween: Had approximately 400 kids come by. Live in a very small town, but the particular street I am happens to be where most of the Halloween action goes down, so kinda get caught in the crossfire because of it. Was shocked to see a number of kids in some anime-related costumes, including a few girls in Sailor Moon outfits - again, small and rural town, so that was a little unusual to me. There must be some closet weeaboos around here somewhere... My own nieces went as Mario & Luigi (don't @ me, they adore those silly plumbers, my youngest niece is always telling people she wants to be a plumber when she grows up...and/or a princess, and yes, I really do mean she's said she wanted to be a "princess plumber" before), and we saw another couple of kids that also went as them, plus a couple of Bowsers and a Peach as well. Sadly, my own favorite Mario character, Princess Daisy, was utterly unrepresented as always...what a scam, .

Bears are dead, Lions are beyond dead, Vikings are all but dead for winning the division - the only thing holding that back is the fact that they and the Packers haven't played each other yet. While I would expect the Packers to win both games at this point, I wouldn't guarantee it, not between those two teams (Zimmer's always been the best in the division at beating the Packers, and the LaFleur Packers are 13-1 in the division...with the only loss being @Packers to the Vikings last year - hard to lose the division when you never lose your divisional games!). As for the Cowboys...yeah, that division is super dead, and you've beat the Eagles and Giants already, and I don't see much reason to expect Washington to have a chance in either games. And so...all that matters is the #1 seed. The Cardinals were the greatest obstacle to the Packers in getting it and I had already thought it lost between the short week, our injuries, and playing @ there, but having beat them, I now believe the Packers can find a way beat anybody. Buccaneers just lost to the Saints somehow, but they legitimately only have one decent opponent left in the Bills for the rest of the season. Really, their schedule is a joke - them losing to the Saints was super important for anybody else to be able to claim the #1 seed, I think. Cardinals have a decent slate of opponents left, including the Rams, week 18 Seahawks (Wilson will probably be back), @49ers, and most pertinent to you, @Cowboys. Rams have @Packers, vs. Titans, @Cardinals, vs. Seahawks (week 15), @Ravens, 2x49ers, @Vikings. That is quite the remaining schedule - pretty much impossible for them to win all those. Cowboys have @Chiefs, vs. Raiders, vs. Cardinals for their remaining "difficult" games. Packers have @Chiefs, 2xVikings, vs. Rams, @Ravens for their remaining "difficult" games. Obviously, any team can drop any game any week - that's the nature of the NFL. But if I had to favor a team getting the #1 seed, I think I like the Buccaneers followed by the Cowboys best, especially because I think the Buccaneers are probably the most complete team (bizarrely bad defensive performance against the Saints notwithstanding), while I think the Cowboys are very likely to inexplicably drop one game to a bad team at some point in addition to likely losing at least a couple of their remaining "difficult" games...as well as having the losing head-to-head against the Buccaneers. After that, I'd probably tie Cardinals and Packers for next most likely, and then Rams the last - owing to their ridiculous remaining schedule.

Yeah, all signs point to him not playing.

Pretty sure you're good, . Can't imagine there's much of an audience in here for a strange magical girl shoujo-seinen fusion...

If you're forcing yourself to watch a show that you don't care for/actively dislike, I can see the weekly episode format being a great help for getting through it. I think I have that ranked as my third favorite Miyazaki film, after Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle (even though the latter has some very big flaws)...and maaaybe Nausicaa - they're pretty close.

Galaxy Express 999, episode 2. We're onto Mars now...which was only semi-successfully terraformed into what's basically a perpetual sandstorm in the wild west - i.e. a hellhole, but a hellhole that's technically inhabitable. Our main character, Tetsuro, decides to check out the local scene and nearly gets murdered by two local lovers for his train pass who want to get off of Mars. He manages to survive thanks to some timely advice of a kindly old barkeep and does the (self-defense) homiciding himself, and gets out of dodge. Alright. It's not particularly grabbing me and it's pretty old-fashioned, but it's O.K. I suppose - undoubtedly much better than something like Lady Asuka anyhow. All the young women characters (three so far) look so close to being exactly the same that it's kind of throwing me for a loop...and then the guy that tried to kill the MC looked bizarrely like Crusher Joe that that also threw me for a loop. Sakura stuff: (e): Samurai Champloo, episode 5. Good lord, poor Fuu can't catch a break...and I still don't know the names of the other two main characters. I *think* the crazy one is Gin, but I still can't figure out the other's. This was probably the weakest episode so far, and it was still pretty decent. (e): Lmao, the other one's name is Jin. Yeah, that about figures. (e): Episode 6... Fun episode, but...not what I expected.

This Packers team has reached new levels of scrappiness that I did not know were possible.

Seeing them is awesome. Having yourself, your home, all your worldly possessions, your livelihood, your family, and a good deal of your friends all possibly being directly in their path is not so awesome, and you kind of lose your appreciation of their beauty and awesome power when you're mentally, emotionally, and physically preoccupied with those precise risks in actual real situations. I'm personally more about the rain and lightning than the tornadoes.

Yeah. I mean, I don't necessarily mind "random" events occurring if they take us somewhere interesting (all sorts of mundane as well as strange events in own lives occur randomly all the time with little to no reason to discern why they happened, after all - most things don't need an explanation beyond "it just happened" so long as they don't raise major logic or suspension of disbelief questions...and assuming they aren't horridly boring), but I definitely do not want my characters feeling like they're behaving and doing things randomly, and Ponyo frustrated me for exactly that reason. When I feel like I don't understand the characters in a work, I usually feel like I don't understand anything at all, and that is an unpleasant feeling.